Things to do in Incheon

Nature · Yeonsu-gu

A seawater canal park down the spine of the new city, with kayaks, a deer meadow and towers on all four sides.

Local tip: The canal is seawater pumped from the bay, which is why it does not freeze the way an inland pond would. Walk the eastern bank at dusk when the towers light up — the western side is where every photo is taken and it faces the wrong way.

Culture · Jung-gu

Korea's only official Chinatown, on the hill above the 1883 treaty port, where jjajangmyeon was invented.

Local tip: The Jjajangmyeon Museum occupies the original Gonghwachun restaurant building and is better than it sounds. Walk over the ridge into the Japanese-era banking street on the other side — same ten minutes, a completely different colonial architecture.

Food · Jung-gu

A covered market by the old port, famous nationally for sweet-and-spicy fried chicken and for dakgangjeong queues.

Local tip: Go on a weekday. The chicken stalls at the market's northern end run forty-minute weekend queues that are entirely avoidable, and the dumpling and mandu stalls in the middle are the actual local habit.

Neighborhood · Jung-gu

A slightly faded seafront amusement strip on the island where the 1950 landings came ashore, next to the reopened inner harbour grain silos.

Local tip: The raw fish market at the end of the promenade is where locals eat rather than the amusement strip. The Sangsang Platform in the converted grain silos nearby is the more interesting half of the area and almost nobody walks between the two.

Landmark · Ganghwa-gun, 90 minutes north-west

A large island of UNESCO-listed dolmens, Goryeo-era fortresses and the closest civilian viewpoint to North Korea.

Local tip: The dolmen sites are free and usually empty. The northern shoreline observatories look directly across the estuary at North Korean farmland — bring your passport, because some of the coastal roads pass military checkpoints.

Nature · Namdong-gu, on the edge of Songdo

Abandoned salt pans turned into a tidal reserve, with wooden windmills, salt-harvesting flats and enormous flocks of migratory birds.

Local tip: This was the salt farm that supplied much of the capital until the 1990s, and the pans are still flooded and drained. Come in late afternoon in autumn for the birds and the pink salt-tolerant plants. It is twenty minutes from Songdo's towers and hardly anyone who lives in them has been.